District Assembly 區域大會

(Taiwan is slow, we haven't changed the name yet!)

I survived the typhoon everyone! :-D It really wasn't that bad, it's not like Taipei hasn't gone through typhoons before, the city is built for it.

Actually, before I say anything else, I want to mention the gas explosion in Gaoxiong you might have heard on the news. It happened at 5 this morning local time; about 30 people were outright killed by it, another 300 injured and a decent chunk of Gaoxiong is on fire. As far as I know, no brothers or sisters were injured in the blast, and it appears to have been an accident rather than terrorism. And of course, Taipei is 400 miles to the north, so we're totally safe. Please keep those people injured in the blast, and their family members, in your prayers.

Also of note: I'm famous now.

My co-famous people, Jessica and Joel

Last Tuesday we three were asked to take part in a Taiwanese commercial for fish sauce, which of course we agreed to. None of us had ever done anything like this before, and we didn't get any real instructions on how to prepare- I was told "dress like a European tourist"- so we just did our best to look actor-y.

They sent a bus to pick us up on Tuesday afternoon and drove us to a town about an hour away called Sanxia, where they were busy building a set inside a rented coffee shop.

I think the "My Little Pony" dolls are a nice touch.

First, they called Joel and two other Taiwanese people up. They set the stage to appear to be a traditional Chinese dinner arrangement- people kneeling on cushions around a low table, eating from communal bowls. I'm pretty sure Joel also got a fake girlfriend for the commercial, too, but she didn't talk much so it's impossible to say for sure.

They basically just wanted Joel and his table to enthusiastically dig in while looking very happy. They had them "start eating" five or six times, taking different angles and correcting small things, then handed them this sign: 

The sauce was ok.

They had to say "Taiwan No.1 Sauce!" in unison and in the exact same way. However, the two Taiwanese people had really thick accents, and there wasn't much to be done about that... so Joel also had to affect a Taiwanese accent or else sound out of place!

Then it was our turn.

The boss setting things up

The premise was the same, but there was four of us instead of three, and it looked like we were at a restaurant. We had a short script: The Taiwanese guy across from me would invite us all to eat (in Chinese), and say there was plenty more. Jessica and I thanked him, and enthusiastically took food. I asked him what the sauce was, he said the name (Niu Tou Jiang) and said it was very famous in Taiwan. I dipped some food in it, ate and looked happy.

Or inquisitive, 都可以.

They did it a few times, got a couple close up reaction shots (awkward to ignore the camera being that close, but really funny), then handed us our very own sign!

I...guess?

These guys had better accents, so it wasn't as funny for us. Oh well! It was an interesting afternoon, we got paid for our time, and the boss said he might have more jobs for us in the future. Not bad!

That night, Typhoon Matmo struck Taipei. The wind was incredible, the rain poured down in sheets and the lightning was nonstop- very awe-inspiring! Joel was a bit worried about his place, and he didn't want to get stuck so far away from everyone if there were problems, so he stayed with us that night. Taipei cancelled work the next day, Wednesday, because of safety concerns, so no one could go to work or school- vacation day! And since none of us had to do anything that day, we stayed up late watching movies, and in the morning did this:

Best brunch ever.

Simple, but delicious. We ended up slowly cooking and eating food while chatting until like 3pm, and by then the typhoon had died down enough to poke our heads outside and look at the damage. Some trees fell down, lots of branches, some motorcycles had been swept into the street, and lots of tiles had been knocked off buildings- we figured that last one would be the most dangerous thing during the typhoon! But only one person died from the typhoon, a tourist who went onto the beach to get good pictures of it making landfall.

Last weekend was also, as you may have guessed from the title, our District Assembly- the last one we'll probably have! (After this they'll turn into Regional Conventions, and I think they already have in most of the world.) Ours was for the entire north half of Taiwan, held in a city called Zhubei, on the western coast. Because many of us don't have cars, we worked together to rent a few buses to take us to and from the convention site each day, about an hour and a half each way.

Arriving! The bus was cramped for us Westerners, but at least it was cheap!

The convention was held at an arena, and although it had a section for Chinese Sign Language and one of the indigenous Taiwanese languages, 阿美語, there was no English. Surprisingly, that was ok; I could understand way more than I was expecting to! 

Convention!

The programs were all really nice, very encouraging. I especially liked the opening symposium on Sunday! Obviously I can't say too much for fear of spoilers :-) There was no A/C on Friday which was killer, but they had it fixed by Saturday.

At the end of the program, leaving was interesting. We weren't the only ones to rent a bus, and we all had to group together to board the buses in waves. Which led to this mess: 

So many people!

It was chaos, with people milling around trying to find their group leader so they could board the bus. No one knew where they were going, there were no lights, and it got worse when a few people drove their motorcycles through the mess (Why?!). That only happened on Friday, though; on Saturday they had made alternate arrangements so it wasn't quite so crazy.

Also on Saturday, Jerry got baptized! Although this means we can't count time for our family study anymore, we're still incredibly happy for him. The baptism pool we rented out was literally a swimming pool, and we didn't rent the whole thing, only one lane. 

Note the guy swimming laps in the back

A decent crowd turned out to watch- no video this time, so if you wanted to see it you had to come in person

Jerry was so happy! I asked him if he felt any different now that he's been officially baptized- he said no, not really, but he feels like he belongs with us now, where before he was just kind of tagging along.

Jerry's hair is still wet!

That night, a large group of us went out to sushi, and of course treated Jerry.

Real wasabi! My stomach is happy while my face burns!

Oh, also, I've forgotten to mention one person: Everyone, meet Tom.

Hi Tom!

Tom is Joe's friend from Yorkshire. He moved in with us last Thursday night, and he's only planning to be in Taiwan for one month. He has only been studying Chinese for one month, but he's already making good progress, and he hopes that spending a month in Taiwan will give him a jump start in the language and help him to be effective in the ministry faster. He's welcome to stay with us- since Joe is paying his share of the rent still, he's helping out by cleaning our house and stuff, and since he's a contractor he says he'll do some work for us for free! Awesome!

Also, Terry Miller is back. He spend a month in Germany and England, attending the Frankfurt Int'l Convention and then going on vacation- he hadn't left Taiwan in over seven years, so this was a long-overdue break! We're happy to have him back, though; it just wasn't the same. 

Everyone at the sushi dinner that night

During Sunday's lunch break we had the SKE meeting- this was the first meeting since the school changed to allow single sisters to apply. As a result, we had over 800 people attend the meeting! 

Look at all the people!

Unfortunately for me, they announced that Taiwan will not be having any foreign-language SKE classes for the foreseeable future, and if you want to attend in Chinese your Chinese must be exactly as good as an actual Taiwanese person... and mine isn't. We also cannot apply to our home country's SKE school from inside Taiwan; we must first go home, have our cards transferred back, then apply, so it's not exactly something you can do without a commitment of at least a few months. So for me, for now at least, I won't be applying to the school. If I end up serving in an English-speaking land, or my Chinese becomes incredibly good, I will reconsider.

It was a great convention overall. We had 6,243 people attend the Sunday meeting, and 209 people baptized in total. Excellent!

All of us bus people on Sunday, back in Taipei

And one last thing: This week, we were once again visited by our local rockstar Irinca, so naturally we threw a party for her. She says her assignment is going very well, and invited us to come visit her this winter, which I might try and do!

It got a little crazy :-)

And that's it for now! Next week is my Pioneer School, which I am super excited about. I'm a little nervous going through it in Chinese, but with Jehovah's help hopefully I will got a lot of benefit from it. I'm not certain how much I can post about it- when I was in Bethel, they were quite strict about recordings, pictures and such- but I will do my best to share a few encouraging things I learn if I can. Until then!

Okinawa 沖繩

(Taiwan's little sister!)

Days pass, and this week was much like the last. I went in the ministry, I taught English, I practiced Chinese, I worked on my degree, I tried to stay cool.

I also went out to eat with the congregation, naturally!

Side note: That restaurant is really cool. It's Japanese style; I'm not sure what it's called in English, if anything, but the name translates something like "hot iron counter grill". You order a meat and two vegetables, they fry it up on the counter (which is indeed hot and made of iron) in front of you, and you carefully eat it with chopsticks. Delicious!

I am getting better at teaching in my kindergarten. Teaching large groups of children is a different skill than teaching just one or two children at a time, particularly when the class' skill level is not even. Progress is being made, though, and every day I get a little better!

My smaller kids watching an English song on my laptop- Lucas saw me

But of course, something did happen. It would be a very boring post if I just ended it like that!

I originally arrived in Taiwan on a student visa, good for six months. Taiwan and America have a very good relationship, so normally Americans do not need a visa to enter Taiwan; but I had received a scholarship, and one of their rules was I had to get an actual visa into the country. That worked great for as long as I was studying at the Chinese Culture University, but now that my class has ended I am not eligible to keep extending it.

That's not too bad of a problem, though; like I said earlier, Americans don't really need a visa to enter Taiwan. When you arrive in the country, you are allowed to stay for 90 days, and do almost anything you want- get a driver's licence, rent property, buy and sell things, even some forms of work.

(Not legal advice: There is some confusion over the work visa that China and Taiwan offer to foreigners, with conflicting information about its necessity and utility. The biggest reason for this is that, to the Chinese, there are two kinds of work: 打工 (dagong) and 工作 (gongzuo), whereas in English we only have one word for it. The work visa is only necessary for 工作, which is like salaried full time positions. Short term contracts or private work, which includes things like selling your own handcrafts and tutoring, are considered 打工 and are ok to do.

This kind of thing is common in Chinese culture. For another example, officially you cannot transform a tourist visa directly into an ARC, a long term residence permit- you must leave the country, get a work visa, then transfer. However, there is a desk at the Taiwan Immigration Office that does literally nothing except transform tourist visas into ARCs.)

Anyway, the reason I mention all of that mess is because it's been 90 days since I went to Hong Kong with Harry, and it's time for me to leave once again. This time, I chose to go to Okinawa, Japan's southernmost province. One of the sisters in my congregation is from Okinawa, so she gave me some contacts; it's a fairly cheap flight from Taiwan; and, it only takes about 90 minutes to fly there. With those things in mind, I bought my ticket and flew out of Taipei early last Wednesday morning.

After going through customs, I was greeted by a friendly face!

Kiyonori Toma, in front of the steps to his house

Kiyonori is a Japanese brother who has lived on Okinawa his whole life. He's been studying English for about a year, including three months in Singapore- good thing, since my Japanese is pretty much nonexistent- and very hospitably donated some of his time to help me around.

I was only there for two days, one night. I wish I could have stayed longer, but a variety of things made that impossible. Since I was staying such a short time, I only brought my backpack with me as luggage, and even that was mostly Taiwanese gifts for people. When Kiyonori saw that I brought such a small bag, he worriedly asked me if I brought dress clothes with me... because as it turns out, he was the conductor in field service that day, and we needed to book it to the group!

I didn't know that, so obviously I didn't bring any nice clothes with me. We hopped in his car (a tiny little Daihatsu) and went to his nearby house, where he began bringing some of his clothes to me to see if any fit. In the end, we found a shirt that, although a little tight, would work; but there was just nothing to be done about my legs. (The stereotype is that Asians are shorter than Western people; there's some truth to that, but we're not just taller, we're all-around bigger, and I don't just mean fatter.)

Territory in Okinawa

So I ended wearing a tight white shirt, a tie and my jeans to meet the group, which they were surprisingly happy with! It was Japanese ministry, which meant that I was absolutely no help to anyone- I stood behind Kiyonori and tried to look polite. (My Japanese consists of "Can you speak English?" "Sorry, no Japanese." "One beer, thank you".) However, the friends out in the ministry were very welcoming, and full of questions about Taiwan, and the Chinese field, and once it came out that I used to be a Bethelite they had a million questions about all the changes happening in New York.

Two of the sisters with us that morning

Although I wasn't much use to the people in the territory, it was nice to be able to give news to the Okinawan brothers and sisters and give them some encouragement. As an added benefit, Kiyonori got to practice his translation!

After the ministry, Kiyonori and I drove back to his house, changed clothes and walked over to the Okinawa Monorail, which we rode into the city of Naha. We planned on meeting another brother, Yuki Honda, at a well-known tourist spot called Kokusai Jie (International Street).

Monorail Station

The weather was fantastic, which was very fortunate. The week before, they'd just suffered through a pretty big series of storms, and as of the time of writing this both Taiwan and Okinawa will be hit by a typhoon in less than 48 hours!

Kokusai Jie

Yuki picked us up right on time, and by "picked us up" I mean he drove by and we jumped into his car without him actually stopping. Yuki is originally from the city of Kagoshima, on the southernmost island of the Japanese Home Islands (Kyushu). He moved to Okinawa six years ago, and right after moving he was convinced to join the Okinawa English congregation. From the way he spoke about it, he has had nothing but good feelings about this decision!

The Okinawa English has only 40 publishers, and they preach almost exclusively to the 12,000 or so American soldiers stationed on the island. (When America invaded Japan during WW2, Okinawa was the only populated island they actually captured before Japan surrendered. America ceded Okinawa back to Japan in the late 70s, but they kept the military base they built and are still using it to this day.) He says that although he was a bit nervous with the idea of preaching to soldiers, it turns out that they are usually very humble, friendly and willing to talk. Most of them are from poorer backgrounds, without much education, and happy to make some local friends.

Although they can't go onto the base to preach- they are allowed to enter, but they need an escort and they can only go to visit one person, not to just randomly walk around- they have great success in the public witnessing work and even telephone witnessing. In fact, Yuki just had a study get baptized at the last assembly!

Anyway, it was lunchtime and we were all hungry, so Yuki drove us to a really nice restaurant he knew of about an hour outside Naha (which is about as far from Naha as you can get- Okinawa is a small place).

Restaurant patio

The scenery was beautiful. Okinawa is surrounded by coral reefs, which stained the sea a gorgeous light blue, the sun was shining, there was a warm breeze...

Kiyonori striking a pose

While we waited for a table, I wandered around their garden for a little while.

Also, check out this spider!

As big as my hand!

You can't tell from the picture, but its web was bright yellow! Wikipedia says it's a kind of 'banana spider', and not very poisonous, but I still wouldn't want one in my house!

Eventually they had a table open up. We gratefully and immediately entered and, at Yuki's suggestion, ordered Thai food. Delicious Thai food!

Finally, a picture of Yuki! He does exist!

As do I!

After stuffing our faces for a while, we discussed what we wanted to do next. The absolute best thing to do on Okinawa, apparently, is scuba dive- they have amazing coral reefs teeming with fish, and Yuki knew one particular cave you could dive into that is amazing. Unfortunately, I don't know how to scuba dive, and you have to sign up in advance for classes... also, it was already 3pm, so we wouldn't have time to do much diving.

So instead we went to check out an awesome castle!

Shuri Castle's front gate

Originally, Okinawa was its own nation called Ryukyu. It ruled over the archipelago that shares its name, the Ryukyu Islands, with Okinawa being the biggest one by far. Although it started out completely independent, by the 1400s it was basically a puppet state of Ming China- the king paid the Ming tribute, the Ming didn't invade them, and patrolled Ryukyu's waters to keep pirates away. In the late 1600's, China's power had waned a bit, and Japan took advantage of this to invade Ryukyu and claim the islands for Japan.

Although this undoubtedly was a bad time for the citizens of Ryukyu, it was actually overall a boost to their economy. See, at that time Japan was very strictly isolationist- no trade with the outside world, period. But Ryukyu was still technically its own nation, so it could trade with the world just fine... and it was technically inside Japan, so it could trade with Japan too. Basically, for a couple hundred years, most goods imported into or exported out of Japan passed through Okinawa, which made the locals quite rich.

Inner gate of Shuri Castle- note how the steps are slanted outwards. This made it easy for boiling oil to pour onto would-be invaders, and made it more comfortable for the king to be carried on palanquin!

During this period, Shuri Castle was the seat of government for the Ryukyu Kingdom/Province, and although comparatively small it manages to be very imposing!

In the late 1800's, as Japan started opening up to the world and industrializing, Okinawa lost their trading advantage but was still fairly prosperous until World War II, when the Americans basically bombed the entire island into the stone age. Even Shuri Castle was obliterated, save for a few features of the basement and dungeon; the current castle was rebuilt in the 1990s based on old pictures and plans of the castle that had been taken to the Home Islands. Although it's a little disappointing that the castle is just a recreation, I really wasn't in any position to complain about it... actually, I had to apologize twice to people while touring it! (I'm politically neutral, I swear! How do you say that in Japanese?)

We arrived at a good time. Right after buying our tickets and entering the castle courtyard, a traditional Ryukyu dance started, so we got seats and watched!

The have bamboo clickers they click with each step...

She performed a fan dance based off of the Karate martial art...

...and she has a stick.

It was art, I'm sure. Actually, even the Japanese brothers with me didn't seem to understand their art, which made me feel better. It was very graceful, but too slow to really be called a dance... but I'm sure it enriched me in some way. Probably.

Across from the dance exhibit was the main castle itself:

The dragon above the doors looks scared

We were allowed to go inside, after taking our shoes off (Japan), and look inside. It was a bit bare- the structure itself has been rebuilt, but they're still recreating furniture and stuff- but very cool! One thing I noticed is that the inhabitants of Ryukyu were really, really short. I am often in danger of hitting my head in Taiwan, but I seriously had to hunch over to fit through their doorways inside that castle.

The one room they had managed to furnish was, naturally enough, the throne room:

The sign translates to something like "Ryuku's Eternal Throne Amidst Mountains and Earth"

The king rarely actually used this room unless he was receiving some delegation from foreign lands- he had a much smaller office that looked way more comfortable he used for day-to-day business.

View of Naha City from the castle

After the castle, Kiyonori had to leave and get to work unfortunately... Yuki and I carried on bravely without him.

We went back to Kokusai Street, since Yuki thought it was worth seeing (and I wanted to pick up some small gifts for people back in Taiwan), and arrived right as the sun began to set.

Kokusai

It's called Kokusai, International, Street because it was the first street to be completely rebuilt after the American invasion, and it was mostly rebuilt by the Americans. They had souvenir shops, local candy (they have a kind of brown sugar rock candy that is delicious), local booze, t-shirts... they also have a kind of glassware they they make out of recycled soda bottles from the military base, which is surprisingly pretty!

We went to get some dinner:

Meat!

So this delicious restaurant is set up like this: each table has a gas grill set in it with a chimney and everything. You order meat and vegetables, which are brought raw to your table, you grill them to perfection and eat them straight off the fire. Delicious! It was all-you-can-eat, which was even better!

I also learned about an interesting cultural thing here. In Japan, when you order a beer, you will also get a small dish to go with the beer- vegetables, or peanuts, or fried rice, or something. You can't say no to this dish, it comes with the beer. But they charge you for it. So just accept that your beer is actually a combo meal.

Yuki Honda and his, disappointingly, Suzuki

After a good night's sleep in Yuki's apartment,, we woke up bright and early to be picked up by another brother and sister from the English, John and Suzuka Bennett.

Naturally, in a rental car place.

John is a South African who moved to Okinawa eight years ago to support the English here and has loved every minute, especially once he met Suzuka. He's the only native English speaker on the body of elders, so besides being a great help in his personal ministry he allows the whole congregation to do better in their target field. It was great meeting them, and Suzuka's onigiri were delicious!

That's one thing I love about our worldwide brotherhood: I came to this place, Okinawa, not knowing a single person, and I left just a day later having made all kinds of friends. We traded numbers and addresses, we'll keep in touch, and of course if anyone comes to Taiwan I'll make sure they have a place to stay.

After I got back to Taiwan I got back into the swing of things pretty fast. Eating some real Japanese onigiri gave me an idea, though: they didn't look very hard to make, and they were delicious. I bet I could make some! So this Sunday, when Paul and Jessica had a get together at their house, I boldly promised I would make onigiri for everyone!

Look what I made!

They're little balls of rice, seasoned, usually with meat filling inside- I chose tuna- and wrapped in some seaweed so you can eat them. Simple and delicious! Mine were about a 70% success. They took a while because I didn't know what I was doing, but they tasted great- their biggest flaw was they didn't stick together like they should, so instead of being hand food they were chopsticks food. Next time I'll use actual Japanese sticky rice instead of just trying to make Taiwanese rice sticky!

The dinner. Fun!

And on the way home that night, Joel and I ran across this cool little alley:

Ominous or lucky?

So yeah, Okinawa was fun. I was more expensive than I had hoped, but it was great, I made new friends, I ate cool food, and everything worked out well. If anyone would like more information about the Okinawa English, let me know and I will give you Yuki's email address- he said he'd be happy to help any brothers out who are thinking about coming over.

I'll try not to blow away until next time!

School 學校

(Not just for kids!)

So you know last month how I said summer arrived? I was actually wrong, it hadn't arrived yet. It's here now though! I checked out the forecast for the next week; every day is exactly the same: High of 97, low of 86, 50%-80% humidity. No wind. It's pretty easy to drink a gallon of water a day, since you sweat just about that much if you go outside at all. On the plus side, the plants are beautiful, and sweating this much is probably great for everyone's skin!

Speaking of plants, recently the trees have gotten very noisy. Well, not the trees themselves, but actually the cicadas which live on every tree. Cicadas are really interesting bugs; they're like little beetles, they spend the first seven years of their life underground, eating the sap found in tree roots, then after seven years they emerge. They molt their skin, growing wings and eyes, climb a nearby tree (probably the same one they've been living under) and make a truly impressively loud buzzing noise, trying to attract a mate, for the remainder of their life- about a week. Here's a video of the noise if you want to hear it. They're completely harmless and actually edible, and they don't buzz at night, so although it sounds like they'd be annoying they're really kind of cool. But they are very loud.

These are not cicadas, but rather the service group taking a break.

If it sounds like I'm complaining about the weather here in Taiwan, I'm not. Well, okay, I am, but only a little bit. If it was always 80, sunny and breezy, I imagine it would get boring very quickly! In any case, having such hot wet weather really does make the environment very beautiful. When my mother was here visiting me, she commented that Taipei is basically a city built in the jungle. It's easy to not realize that, since it's a really big city- you just kind of assume they spend a lot of time taking care of all the plants and trees in the city. As you start to leave the city, though, you can see that the city just gradually yields to the surrounding rainforest, and in fact the rainforest never went anywhere- it still grows out of the cracks in the sidewalk.

That said, they do take pride in their landscaping. I like that this tiny pond has an ecosystem.

As well, since it rains pretty much every day, we sometimes get awesome rainbows like this one:

There's only one- it probably doesn't mean anything.

So earlier last week, we were visited by a sister and her two children- their last name was Li, they were ethnically Taiwanese but had been living in America since before the younger son was born. They came to visit Taiwan just for a week- see the grandparents and such- and I believe they've already left.

Anyway, I mention them because I had a chance to work out in service with the older son. He was born in Taiwan and can speak Chinese, but he left when he was five, so he's quite American by now. It made me think about the cultural differences that start happening even in childhood- actually, you could say that all cultural differences only happen in childhood, and adults merely express whatever pattern they learned. He mostly talked about all the apps he has on his iPad, all the games he misses back home, how he doesn't know why they have to come to Taiwan so often, and how he thought it would be funny to try spending the $10 bill he brought with him at just some random food stall around the area.

We stopped here for some 豆花- it's like soymilk yogurt with peanuts and syrup. Weird, but good.

Compared to an average Taiwanese child of the same age (12, by the way)- I haven't seen any child with even a cell phone here, I only know one family that has a games console, and mostly they'd be pumped to go on vacation, hardly missing home at all. But then, Taiwanese kids spend a lot more time at school than American kids- of course, they have their seven hours a day at school, but after school most parents put them in various 補習班 (buxiban) programs- essentially review courses designed to go over what they learned earlier that day. Depending on the school, the class and how many classes they take, this after school program can last 3-5 hours. And then they still have their homework to do! So it's no wonder they don't have as much time to play on the iPad they don't have.

Three of our 小朋友 (xiao pengyou, translates to "small friend") out in service

We weren't too serious with them, though

And then we decided to help them play

But is that much school really good for the kids? Every day, for twelve or more hours, they sit still and have information crammed into their heads. And the Chinese education system isn't all that interactive, either- lots of tests, lots of memorization. 

Another aspect that can put a great deal of pressure on even very small kids is the Taiwanese 'tiered' school system. The system is basically divided like this- 幼稚園 (youzhi yuan), kindergarten, then 小學 (xiao xue), which is grades 1-5, 國中(guo zhong), which is grades 6-9, and 高中 (gao zhong), which is grades 10-12. Then you have the adult system, with 大學 (da xue) being the best kind of university, 學院 (xue yuan) being like a community college, and 技術學校 (jishu xuexiao) being more like a technical school, that teaches trades.

If you do well in kindergarten, you can get into a better 小學. Depending on how well you did in 小學, you can get into a different 國中. If you did well in 國中, you can continue to a good 高中 (note that I said can: in Taiwan, education is only mandatory until grade 9, so really bad students essentially don't get accepted to high school). And the best colleges only pick students from the best few 高中.

What this essentially means is, if you're eight years old, in third grade, and have an attitude, or family trouble, or for whatever reason don't do well in school? You can mess up your entire school career. If your troubles were temporary, maybe you hated every minute of elementary school but you turn it around in junior high? Well, because you did poorly in elementary school, you couldn't get into a good junior high, so no matter how well you do- you could be the best student in the school four years running- you will never be able to get into the best high schools, which means you will never be able to go to an actual university, but must instead study a trade or something. And unlike in America, trades pay nothing in Taiwan- think three or four dollars an hour, maybe.

You know that "Asian Dad" stereotype, always pushing his kids to study harder and do better no matter how well they're actually doing? It's actually a thing here, and although I don't agree with the system I can't fault the parents. The crazy thing is, the system even kind of makes sense- America tried to make all schools exactly the same, and we ended up with the "No Child Left Behind" mess that basically makes schools move at the speed of the slowest student. Shouldn't faster kids be able to move faster? And it is true that you will never be able to learn as well as when you were a child- your brain structure physically changes around ages 20-25. At the same time, is it really fair to penalize someone for life for something they did (or didn't do) at age 10? Is it fair to put that much pressure on children?

Everyone, meet 寬正 (Kuanzheng)!

Kuanzheng is a young man, 17 years old, currently studying the Bible with Terry Miller. He's been studying for about a year now and wants to get baptized in a few months. He's a really cool guy and I like hanging out with him! Kuanzheng is facing a dilemma right now. He still has one more year in his high school until he graduates. His grades, academically, are not very good- however, he is one of the best students in his school at Taekwondo. He's on the Taekwondo team, actually, which is the only reason he's attending the high school that he is. (Americans have school football teams, the Chinese have martial arts.)

Kuanzheng has recently decided that he cannot continue on the Taekwondo team. It's violent, it's studying methods of harming people, and although it isn't actually killing people it is still a form of "learning war", which we, as Jehovah's Witnesses, do not do. He came to this decision on his own, it was not forced. However, that means that unless his grades improve pretty significantly, he'll most likely be kicked out of his high school, and it's not certain he'll be able to join a different one. In America, it's rare to find a Witness who will advocate going for a four-year degree; but in Taiwan, because the trades pay so little, if you want to both have a family and be able to support the ministry in any way, you need a degree. (Or have enough money to open your own shop.)

So basically, Kuanzheng is risking quite a lot in the name of Jehovah. He's demonstrating his faith that Jehovah will take care of him, and especially for being so young, is a pretty powerful example. I wanted to share his story because I am pretty impressed by it. (And yes, I asked him first.)


Anyway, I personally have two kinds of English class I teach here in Taiwan: I tutor in-home, and I work at a kindergarten. I have three private tutoring sessions a week (although two of them are with a pair of children, so five private students total), and two classes at the kindergarten with six and eight kids each, respectively.

This is Hans, Jessie, and their bird named, as far as I can tell, "Bird".

I really enjoy my private tutoring jobs. I have control over how fast the class moves, I can make sure the kids get the information, and I can have fun with it, incorporating games and videos into the lessons. I'm probably not the world's best teacher, but they are learning, and they're always happy to see me- a good sign! Besides Hans and Jessie, I have two twin girls, Gigi and Fifi, and then Alex, my oldest and most advanced student.

This is Harrison. He likes that hat.

My kindergarten is a little less fun, just by its nature. I spend more time getting the class under control than in the private classes, because there are more kids, and I have to teach to a schedule whether or not I feel the kids are ready to move on. But I do my best, they do learn something- and hey, it's cheaper for a reason, right?

This week has also been our Circuit Overseer's visit. Br. Luo (纙) has been in the Circuit work for about eight years, and actually before he started he attended this very congregation, Taipei South! So he's always extra happy to stop by and see us- it's like coming home for him.

The man in action

He's really laid back, very comfortable on stage- as you can probably tell from the picture- but direct, and makes strong points. Unfortunately, he also has a very strong Taiwanese accent, so it's sometimes hard for me to understand what he says... but it's good practice!

Flawless segue: 

Gengzuo and Qianhui Jiang

I had lunch with this delightful couple today. See, they're from Okinawa originally, and I'm going to Okinawa next week- Wednesday, actually- so I thought I'd pick their brains for ideas. I wish I could spend more time there, but even the overnight trip I'm planning should be awesome! I'll tell you about it next time...